Tag Archives: water pollution
Do some green deeds while sleeping
Ecotypic Bed
Sleeping till late hasn’t really been too productive for any of us before but here is Ecotypic Bed. Well, sleeping and lazing around on the Ecotypic Bed could do a lot more!
Designed by Arthur Xin is a marvel of technology. Packing a battery below, this Ecotypic Bed generates electricity from the activities carried out on the bed. Basically, everything you do in bed and around the bed is turned into energy. This electricity generated is then use to power up the LED reading lamps, the speakers that play some soothing music to wake you up, and also LED lights that help the plants on this one grow.
The Ecotypic Bed has hooked on a bunch of straps and pulleys for you to exercise with, that helps generate electricity too.
“This is a green bed.” It has everything you need! A LED reading lights, speakers and a flower box.
There’s a battery below the bed which turns the activities you do on the bed and around the bed into energy.
Do everything all day long on the Ecotypic bed!
Indonesian wins international prize for river clean-up
A biologist who enlisted schoolchildren in his fight to clean up an Indonesian river that led to an international prize said he hoped young people will do more for the environment.
Student research into a 41 km stretch of the Surabaya River that flows through Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, prompted 35-year-old PrigiArisandi into discoveries that helped him become one of six winners of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, the world’s largest award for grassroots environmentalists.
Arisandi found that the river, which provides water for three million and is also used for bathing by people living along its banks, was contaminated with high levels of toxic effluent. Recently, mercury levels were found to be 100 times the limit set by the World Health Organization.
He and other activists created the first environmental education program in the region in 2000 to educate local communities about biodiversity and water pollution, teaching students about the dangers and using them to spread the word. “These students are the victims of pollution,”Arisandi told Reuters at his Surabaya office last week. “We place these children as agents of change… We bring them to the river and there are already thousands of children that we have trained.”
Arisandi and other activists have also taken legal action to stop companies from polluting the river and won a case against East Java’s governor, who was ordered to reduce pollution. The $150,000 prize, named after husband and wife philanthropists from San Francisco, honors individuals for sustained efforts to protect the natural environment “often at great personal risk,” according to the prize’s website.
The other 2011 winners are from the United States, Zimbabwe, Germany, Russia and El Salvador.
Firth and his Wife go green on Oscar’s red carpet
At the 83rd Academy Awards, actor Colin Firth not only stole the show with accolades for his The King’s Speech performance but for his eco-friendly attire.
As always, Firth and his wife Livia donned environment-friendly outfits at the Oscars and this year they did it recycled style in order to raise awareness for recycled fashion.
Livia, who founded Fair-trade boutique Eco Age, wore an amazing paneled gown recycled from old dresses on the red carpet while Colin made a Tom Ford suit made of ethical materials look better than good. “It defies what you normally see on the red carpet. It’s really beautiful — it’s pretty but also has a message,” said Livia.
Battery using sunlight to power itself
Here’s a battery that will never run dry and you will never need to toss in the bin so long as the sun shines up there in the sky. Designed by Yung-Hsaing Chang, Ming-Shien Lin and Chang-Ting Lu, the Light Catcher battery, (a catchy name for a battery) powers using energy from the sun.
With AA and AAA variants, the body of this battery is transparent and coated with an anti reflective layer. Inside lie the solar cells that soak in the sun’s energy.
The Light Catcher entry for the 2011 IF concept designs competition. Running out of juice will not be so much of a concern anymore, especially if you’re out there in the outdoors.
Cutting oil consumption by eco-driving
You can save fuel by avoiding stop-and-go traffic, closing your window, not using air conditioning or coasting toward halts — basically what is coming up as eco-driving.
Research at the University of California Riverside’s College of Engineering Centre for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT) can give you the answers. The research field is called eco-driving, which refers to providing drivers with advice to minimise fuel consumption when driving, according to a university statement.
“This is a really big deal,” said Matthew Barth, the director of CE-CERT and professor of electrical engineering. “Automobile manufacturers are doing anything possible to make cars more fuel efficient.”
In a study last year, a group of drivers in the Riverside area used the eco-driving device, known as Eco-Way, for their daily commute for two weeks. Researchers found it improved fuel economy by six per cent on city streets and one per cent on highways.
Eco-driving studies in Europe, most of them conducted in pre-planned driving courses, have found fuel economy improvements between five and 15 per cent.
A survey provided to the Riverside area drivers found that most are willing to adopt eco-driving practices in the near future. On a one to 10 scale, with 10 being the most likely to adopt, the average score from drivers was 7.4.
Know the emissions of your car and keep it efficient
The cars we use today just keep chocking the life out of our environment. And every time we rev our engines or leave our cars on at traffic signals, we blow up a load of fuel and at the same time, spout out carbon emissions.
Here’s a device to help keep a check on your current car’s emissions. The Eco-Navigator is basically a GPS navigation device with a high- speed Internet access and an Eco-Way mode. This mode plugs into your car’s diagnostic port, and keeps a check on your car’s current miles-per-gallon, throttle position (as a 0-100 per cent), and pounds of CO2 emitted per mile. The device also gives out information on the ideal stats your car should throw up, allowing you to alter the way you drive accordingly and helping increase fuel efficiency!
A smart device that helps you drive smart, the Eco-Navigator is the answer to current day efficiency woes.
Wonderful ants
Little ants impact the environment in a big way, thanks to their role as “ecosystem engineers” and predators, a British study has found.
A University of Exeter study found that ants have two distinct effects on environment. They move soil by building nests and they affect the level of nutrients in the soil by collecting food. This can indirectly impact the population of many animal groups, from decomposers such as Collembola, to species much higher up the food chain, the Journal of Animal Ecology reports.
The ants prey on a wide range of other animals too, according to an Exeter university statement. “Ants are very effective predators who thrive in huge numbers. They’re also very territorial and aggressive… All of this means they have a strong influence on their surrounding area,” said study author Dirk Sanders.
“What we found is that despite being predators, their presence can also lead to an increase in density and diversity of other animal groups. They genuinely play a key role in the local environment, having a big influence on the grass-land food web,” Sanders said.
The study, carried out in Germany, investigated the impact of the presence of different combinations and densities of black garden ants and common red ants.
International accords on saving forests have little impact
International accords on saving vulnerable forests are having little impact because they do not attack the core causes such as growing demand for bio-fuels and food crops, a new report said.
With Africa and South American alone losing 7.4 million hectares of forest a year, the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) said a drastic change of policy is needed by the United Nations and governments.
Sixty international experts said in the report, to be presented at a UN forum this week that too much attention is being put on forests as a store of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming.
Deforestation accounts for about a quarter of the global greenhouse gas emissions each year which are blamed for rising temperatures. Live trees act as a sponge for carbon but give it off when they decay or are burned.
“Our findings suggest that disregarding the impact on forests of sectors such as agriculture and energy will doom any new international efforts to conserve forests and slow climate change,” said Jeremy Rayner chairman of the IUFRO report panel.
Even the most recent UN backed initiative, Reducing Deforestation in Developing countries (REDD) is criticized because the panel said it seeks a single global solution.
The experts said that REDD and other international accords should focus more on supporting regional and national efforts to save the forests at risk.
“Unless all sectors work together to address the impact of global consumption, growing demand for food and bio-fuels, and problems of land scarcity, REDD will fail to arrest environmental degradation and will heighten poverty,” said Constance McDermott of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute.
Pollution renders quarter of Chinas water unusable
Almost a quarter of China’s surface water remains so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, while less than half of total supplies are drinkable, data from the environment watchdog showed on July 26. Inspectors from China’s Ministry of environmental Protection tested water samples from the country’s major rivers and lakes in the first half of the year and declared just 49.3 per cent to be safe for drinking, up from 48 per cent last year, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website. 
China classifies its water supplies using six grades, with the first three grades considered safe for drinking and bathing. Another 26.4 per cent was said to be categories IV and V – fit only for use in industry and agriculture – leaving 24.3 per cent in category VI and unfit for any purpose. Despite tougher regulations over the last decade, the ministry has struggled to rein in the thousands of small paper mills, cement factories and chemical plants discharging industrial waste directly into the country’s waterways, and the overuse of fertilizers has also left large sections of China’s lakes and rivers chocking with algae.